


Memories

by DancerInTheShadows



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Supernatural, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crossover, Dead Bobby Singer, Dead Castiel, Dead Sam Winchester, Dean is part of Team Arrow, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt No Comfort, Photographs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 19:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12990975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancerInTheShadows/pseuds/DancerInTheShadows
Summary: He rolls up out of the blue one cold September, giving only the name Dean. He saves Oliver's life with a well-placed machete, and slowly becomes a part of Team Arrow. But they never knew much about him, never knew what it was that gave him those shadows behind his eyes, never knew what it was that taught him to fight these things so well. Something had happened in the past, something that left him broken.





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

> So, this story takes place in a universe where Cas, Bobby, and Sam were never resurrected after the events of Swan Song, and Dean didn't go to liv with Lisa like he'd promised. Instead, he kept on hunting. Arrow and The Flash are moving chronologically, just with Dean added in.

He appeared out of the blue one cold September night, roaring around the corner in that big, black classic car, a ‘67 Chevy Impala, impeccably maintained and polished. The thing they’d been fighting had taken one look at the car and backed off, but they’d cornered it in an alleyway and there was nowhere for it to go, not with Oliver blocking its escape and Diggle on the rooftops to keep it from getting away overhead. It’d pressed itself against the rough bricks and almost gibbered in terror as a tall man with incredibly green eyes stepped out of the car, paced over to the whatever-it-was, and chopped off its head with one clean swing of a machete. Oliver and Diggle had stared at him for a moment, glaring down at the headless body of the thing, and then Oliver had stepped forward and asked him who he was.

“Dean” was the only reply he gave.

\-----

He kept showing up while they tried to keep killing the whatever-they-weres, and eventually Oliver asked him to come over to the base beneath the nightclub and tell them exactly what they were fighting. He agreed, reluctantly, but when he got there he seemed to become someone else entirely, staring around in wonder at the base, murmuring under his breath when he caught sight of the weapons in the cases. Felicity stared at him for a long moment before walking over.

“Cool, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s awesome. Sammy…” He seemed to realize what he’d said and shut off, the raw emotion on his face quickly fading into a cool, emotionless blankness. “You wanted to know what that was and how to kill it, right?”

He told them it was a vampire and that it could be killed by chopping off its head, and it could be slowed down by sunlight or an injection of dead man’s blood.

He told them that the supernatural existed, and that there were things out there that very few people could face and survive. Very few.

When Diggle asked him if he was one of those people, he nodded and pulled out a hip flask, taking a long drink from whatever it was that was inside. Noticeably, he showed no indication that it was anything more than water, and went over to lean against the wall and explain that he’d heard that there was an infestation of vampires in this city and had come to check it out and kill them if there were any.

He left the day after, disappearing into the night with that beautiful black car, and they didn’t see him again for a while.

\-----

He reappeared in about a year, when they were facing off against something with yellow eyes and fangs. He showed up, plunged a dagger, too silver-bright to be steel, into the creature’s heart, and told them it was a werewolf.

He didn’t leave after that.

He stayed in Starling City, and at first they thought he was a drunk, and then when they were investigating a murder, he showed up at the crime scene and took out a gunman targeting Oliver with nothing more than that same dagger-made-of-too-bright-metal, and the weird flickering image of a woman with a blast of what looked like buckshot from a sawed-off. They got the hell out of there and went back to the base and Dean somehow became a member of Team Arrow.

\-----

He always refused a costume or a mask, and rarely helped out with the regular cases, or even the fight against whatever major big bad there was. He disappeared between supernatural cases, off to who-knew-where, and they never heard from him until he rolled back in town for a day or a week or longer. He showed up when there was a case that couldn’t be explained by regular means, took it out with little-to-no help from the rest of the team, and then disappeared until the next ghost or werewolf or vampire or shifter.

Despite that, they got to know him pretty well, because for some strange reason, monsters seemed to flock to him like moths to flame. They saw the shadows behind his eyes, like Oliver’s but so much worse, so much darker, speaking of unspeakable things and horrors beyond comprehension that had happened long ago, but the stains of their presence would never fully fade. They saw the way his eyes flashed bright, brilliant green when he was happy, which was only when he was drunk and had just completed a particularly difficult hunt. They saw the way they were almost colorless most of the time, they way when he thought no one was looking they’d slowly well with tears until one slipped over and tricked down the side of his nose, before he’d lift an arm and scrub it away and pretend it never happened.

The way he occasionally took a photograph out of his wallet and looked at it for a long time, seemingly unable to tear his eyes away, before being startled out of his reverie by something, and then he’d put it away fingers lingering over the worn surface until he had to focus on something else.

\-----

There was something in his past, something he never revealed and no one could find out by any means, not even Oliver or Captain Lance or Thea. When Barry and Cisco and Caitlin came over to help out with whatever meta had showed up this time, he smiled wryly at the names Cisco gave the villains and left again. He didn’t show up again for a week, and no one was really worried because he did that all the time, but there was always the nagging fear that he’d put his gun to his head and that’s be the end of him.

He never did, though. For some unknown reason, he never did. Whether it was because despite all appearances, he didn’t want to die, he thought he didn’t deserve to die, or he just couldn’t muster up the courage, he never did.

\-----

Three years passed, and he seemed to get even darker over time. Felicity actually began to worry that he’d kill himself, but he didn’t.

When the aliens attacked and Barry brought Kara through to help fight them, he wasn’t surprised at the fact that aliens existed.

“Everything else exists, why not aliens? Except Sasquatch.” For some reason, that last word sent him into a bout of depression that lasted for a week, until the next hunt turned up. For some reason, Star City (as it’d been renamed after Ray Palmer’s supposed death) seemed to have a higher density of monsters than Dean was used to.

But no demons.

Never any demons.

“They’ve probably heard of my reputation,” he bragged in a rare lighter moment, chuckling to himself over something in his mysterious past, something that made monsters flee from him when they heard his name. But when Felicity looked for him online, for any record, They found a criminal record that spanned several years, multiple faked deaths, and suspicions of multiple murders and grave desecrations. They watched him extra-carefully after that, but he never showed any sign that he was the same person he used to be, and so slowly they let him be.

But she did find his last name.

Winchester.

\-----

She looked up his records again, using that name, and found out he had a brother, one Samuel Henry Winchester. She confronted him one day with that name.

“So I heard you had a brother named Sam-” He cut her off before she could get any farther, his eyes lighting up with vicious fire, the gray-green of his eyes darkening to almost black.

“Don’t ever mention that name again.” He wasn’t shouting, although shouting would’ve been better than the raw, shattering grief on his face and in his voice, tearing at her heart with the sheer force of it. She stepped back, scared of this man she saw before her, a man she suddenly realized she didn’t know at all, despite having known him for four years. He had a past, a past that showed in his eyes, but one he never spoke about, never thought about, was clearly trying to forget.

He turned and left, and they didn’t see him for a long while, eventually returning and not speaking of the incident.

But Felicity did everything she could to avoid mentioning the name Sam again.

\-----

It was a few weeks after the alien incident when Barry invited them all over to Central City for Christmas. Dean was originally going to decline, but Thea managed to persuade him to come with. She’d always been good at getting Dean to do something, more able to connect with him than any of the others.

When they went over to Central City, they stopped at S.T.A.R.Labs to say hi to Cisco and Caitlin and the others, before heading over to Jitters to catch up. Dean didn’t bother to go, instead disappearing off somewhere, probably to a bar.

At the party later that evening, he showed up a little bit late and a little bit drunk, although not enough for it to really mean anything. Team Flash was a little startled, but Oliver assured them this was normal for Dean most of the time.

Even through the merriment and the gift giving and the laughter and Julian arriving and the carolers, he didn’t say anything, just sat on the couch with his eyes closed and an open beer in his hand, occasionally sipping from it. Everyone was a little wary of him, steering away from the silent man on the sofa in front of the christmas tree.  
Julian eventually worked up the nerve to ask who he was.

“His name’s Dean Winchester. He showed up about four years ago, helped us out with some cases. He’s a part of the team now, but he doesn’t really get out much. This is really the first time I’ve seen him leave Star City. With us, anyways. He disappears every so often.”

“Is he always like that?”

“Pretty much. This’s a little worse than normal, though.”

Cisco stared at him for a while, then moved over and sat next to him. He sat silently for a while, until Dean opened his eyes and turned to look at him.

“Whaddya want?”

“You lost someone.” Cisco said, bluntly, directly, strange for him, but then, he’d had the same thing happen to him.

“Yeah. So?”

“So who’d you lose?”

“None of your damn business.”

Cisco didn’t say anything for a long time, just sitting and waiting. Eventually the others at the party fell silent and turned to watch them. Dean didn’t appear to take any notice, just staring ahead into space for a long time, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet, opening it up and pulling out a photograph, slapping it onto the table.  
It showed a man with long hair and hazel eyes, laughing with his head thrown back and his brown hair all over the place. He was taller than all the others in the photo by at least three inches. His arm was around the shoulders of another person it took everyone a few seconds to recognize as Dean, he looked so different.

Happy. Face younger and without the lines of pain and sorrow etched into it, eyes brilliantly, vibrantly green, laughing like nothing mattered in the entire world.  
Next to them was another man in a tan trenchcoat, who looked incredibly confused, staring with his head tilted at the camera, a quizzical look on his face. Next to the trenchcoated man was another, much older than any of the others, with a full beard and a mustache and beard and a baseball cap, rolling his eyes, but smiling as he did so. Behind them all was the ‘67 Chevy Impala that Dean loved, that was all Dean seemed to be willing to keep from his old life.

“That’s Bobby,” Dean said, breaking the silence. “He was like a father to me. Was a father to me, even if it wasn’t by blood.” He tapped the image of the older man. “Cas’s the one standing next to him. I only knew him for two years, but… He was like a brother to me. A second brother.”

He fell silent for a long moment, and the entire room was silent, people just staring at him. He ignored them all, staring at the old, creased photograph, a few tears silently trickling down through stubble and falling with almost-audible plops onto the coffee table.

“What about the other one?” Caitlin asks quietly, even her almost-whisper seeming too loud in the dead-quiet.

Dean’s breath caught in his throat, and he turned his gaze to the last figure on the photo.

“That was my brother, Sam. He… he… Oh, God, Sammy… he… sacrificed himself. Gave himself over to an eternity being tortured to save the world. To save me.

“They all died in that fight. All of them. Except me. I should’ve died. I should’ve been killed right along with them. I shouldn’t’ve lived. At all. I don’t deserve it.”

With a sudden movement, he pulled himself to his feet and snatched the photograph, folding it carefully and shoving it into his pocket. He stormed out the door, into the darkness, and even though Oliver called for him to come back, he didn’t waver.

\-----

They never saw him again.

\-----

About a month later, there was a news report from the middle of Kansas, a town called Lawrence or something like that, small town, almost off the map, about a shooting there. Eyewitnesses said a man had walked into a crowded bar, pulled out a gun, and his eyes had flashed solid black. Another man, sitting at the bar, lunged out and attacked him, managing to wrest the gun away and toss it to the ground before stabbing the man in the chest. Eyewitnesses said the black-eyed man flickered with orange light when he died, screamed in an inhuman voice.

Dean had managed to stop the whatever-it-was. Demon, from what he’d told them before. Even after he’d already been shot.

When one of the patrons began CPR, he grabbed their hands and told them to stop, that he wanted to die. They tried to keep him alive, but he struggled and fought them.

He did die, in the middle of the bar floor, bleeding out from a fatal gunshot wound.

The report said his name had not yet been released, but Team Arrow knew who it was.

Dean Winchester.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments are more than welcome.


End file.
